


Calm Before The Storm

by burymeinziam



Series: A Little Screw Loose [4]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, ziam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-23
Updated: 2013-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-24 09:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/938269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burymeinziam/pseuds/burymeinziam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liam watches Zayn fumble with his belt before pulling it from his waist and tossing it to the side as if it never really mattered. Thick blue jeans fall to the ground and Zayn steps forward in nothing but a pair of black briefs and a mess of tattoos, nakedly embracing the storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calm Before The Storm

It’s the way his eyes jump from building to building searching for faces that aren’t there – and never were – that tears at the back of Liam’s throat. Zayn swears he can hear them, hear them talking and sharing secrets hidden in the ground; lingering. Sometimes Zayn will open and close his mouth, like he’s trying to figure out the right words to say in return, but mostly he just stands there tugging at his hair with savage fingers while he cries.

His hands are calloused and frost bitten when he presses them to Liam’s ribs and tells him to forget all about it. Liam stands behind the screen door and waits as Zayn listens to his horizons. Liam wants to tell him to come inside and take his medicine, Liam  had made cocoa and doesn’t Zayn like cocoa? Maybe he can come inside and drink some with the pills the doctor had prescribed and possibly get some sleep. But Liam knows that asking will be to no avail and decides to pretend like it doesn’t even matter anymore.

When the sun creeps behind the trees and the fog settles, Zayn turns to him.

“It’s just a storm, Zayn,” Liam reminds him. “It’s just another storm passing through.”

Zayn nods, but Liam can tell he doesn’t believe him. Zayn lifts his head up to the sky and clamps his eyes shut, his dry lips pursed and anxious. Rain makes Zayn nervous and Liam knows this; he says it drowns out the voices and when Zayn doesn’t have them, when he can’t hear their stories, he doesn’t have anything. Liam remembers a time when Zayn loved the rain; when he would drag Liam outside by the hand and spread their arms out wide, their fingers splayed out together, palm to palm, and he would look up to the sky and sing and laugh and smile. Zayn said the rain reminded him of freedom, said it was a beautiful thing how water could be trapped inside of a cloud for so long only to free fall towards the ground.

“It’s freedom,” Zayn had said. “It’s release.”

Now, there’s a blaze of lightning and Liam watches as Zayn’s eyes squeezes his eyes shut even further as he counts the numbers.

One. Two. Three. Four – and then a clash of thunder causes him to shake and shiver.

Between the howling of the wind, Zayn holds up four fingers for Liam to see before dropping them back to his side. His limbs contort as Zayn pulls the thin cotton of his T-shirt over his head, his chest heaving just like it always does on nights like this. Liam watches Zayn fumble with his belt before pulling it from his waist and tossing it to the side as if it never really mattered. Thick blue jeans fall to the ground and Zayn steps forward in nothing but a pair of black briefs and a mess of tattoos, nakedly embracing the storm.

“Come inside, Zayn,” Liam calls out, his voice shaky and nervous. “You’re gonna catch pneumonia or something.”

Zayn doesn’t move. He says something about this maybe being the one; the night when he’ll be able to hear them over the howling wind and the steady drum of the rain hitting the ground. For the second time, Zayn looks back and Liam and moves his mouth with the seconds – one, two, three. Just three more miles until the tempest breaches their home, ripping them apart again and again and again.

The first time Zayn heard them talking, Liam didn’t say anything about it. It was better to imagine Zayn was playing make believe like he used to do in school, or that he would get better on his own. That was the time Zayn had spent a week on the Liam’s mother’s front porch tracing pictures into the dirt because he said this kind of understanding was beyond the words Zayn loved so much to put on paper. Zayn stopped sleeping, instead favoring black coffee in the evenings because he was too afraid he might miss something.

Liam remembers when they went to the doctor and the doctors told them what was wrong, how they could help, but only if Zayn wanted to help himself.

And Zayn said no.

Said it was easier to be sick.

Zayn doesn’t really bother with the pills anymore, only taking them when it was convenient or when it all became too much. He hides them in his drawers, buries them beneath the garden with his book full of secrets. Sometimes he’ll notice Liam watching him, but Zayn doesn’t really mind. He knows Liam won’t try and stop him; not anymore.

People say it will get easier with time, that eventually the episodes will become routine or mundane or even bearable. But they don’t see the way Zayn’s eyes sit sad and vacant when the stories disappear and they don’t hear the noises Zayn sometimes makes in his sleep.

They don’t know any of that because if they did, they’d understand that this is more than just a phase or a silly delusion. This is Zayn’s life. It’s his and Liam’s life together. There isn’t anything else, not anymore; just Zayn and Liam and the voices.

A concurrent snap of thunder and lightning surround them and Liam can recite word for word what is about to happen next. Zayn will sink to his knees and scratch and his skull and allow a primordial screech to fight past his lungs. The rain will soak his near naked body until he starts to shake and quiver with an infinite melancholy that will tear Liam apart to his very core. Zayn will press his ear to the ground and cry for a murmur that will never come.

The rain beats at Zayn’s back, blessed and broken and those frantic eyes meet Liam’s and for a moment, Liam questions whether or not tonight will be the exception. Underneath the porch light, Liam raises his head to the clouds and prays for the first time since high school, but when he unclasps his hands and casts his eyes toward the tacit boy before him, Liam thinks – or knows – that there is nobody to hear his pleas.

Neither of them speak as they walk toward each other, their footsteps crooked and poorly paced. There is no crying or touching. No soft condolences or pitying glances. Their breath hangs unevenly in the thickening silence and, at that very moment, Liam thinks he could run. Zayn is offering a solitary opportunity of escape, practically begging Liam to leave. The look on Zayn’s face tells Liam that he’s okay with it, that it would make him sad and he would miss Liam unlike anything that has ever been missed, but he would be okay; Zayn would make that sacrifice.

And Liam almost does it, nearly allows himself to move because it could be so easy.

“I don’t have anywhere else to be,” Liam says, fumbling with his swollen, sandpaper tongue.

Zayn doesn’t say the words, but Liam can see them sprawled across his limbs. ( _I know_ )

Gravity binds Liam’s soles, heavy with guilt and alarm, determinately to the ground. But in a swift motion, Zayn is beside him, allowing one hand to grip Liam’s shoulder and the other to coil around his clammy fingers. There are no words when they walk back inside, just the truth, inevitable and inconvenient, sinking in the night.

Zayn sits on the countertop, his bones warped over himself. Half-empty eyes move past Liam and focus instead on the telephone wires, stripped from the walls in a pile of muddled tendons. In the mornings when the city sounds are too much, Liam wonders how he can stand it. There must have been something he’d done wrong, something he did to deserve this wretched twist of fate because he’d never had any intention of living this way.

The rain thins and the clouds pass overhead, leaving them alone with the memory of their stories. Zayn won’t look at Liam in the evenings when he’s thinking about the voices. He won’t meet Liam’s gaze, but Liam never takes his eyes off of Zayn, terrified that he might leave in the heat of the moment and disappear like the sounds of the storm.

“The guy on TV says the next one won’t be for another couple of weeks,” Zayn says, his voice quiet and vacant.

There are things Liam would change if he could, things he’d try and forget but he can’t.

“We should really get you a raincoat.

 


End file.
